


A Tale to Cure Deafness

by elviaprose



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Long Lost/Secret Relatives, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 12:28:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3067835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elviaprose/pseuds/elviaprose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gauda Prime is years in the past when Avon meets Ili Chesku, his fifteen year old son.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tale to Cure Deafness

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the B7 kink meme prompt, "Avon meets Anna's orphaned child who may or may not be his. Blake thinks Avon should adopt him. Avon and the kid both think this is a terrible idea."
> 
> Many, many thanks to Aralias for the wonderful beta work! (It's sort of like what they say about New York, New York. She's so nice, she beta'd it twice)

_“Your tale, sir, would cure deafness”—Miranda, The Tempest._

 

Ili Chesku lay stretched flat on what was now his long white sofa in what was now his front room, looking up at the sky through his skylight. He thought it might very easily become his favorite thing to do, mostly because not many people could do it, but partly because it was a very good way to think.  Only the best rooms, rooms at the very top level of the Alpha Domes, had skylights like his. He thought he could probably lie there for hours, just looking through the foot-thick window at the hazy blue, or gray, or black.  

Today the slice of sky he could see was unbroken blue. Today he was fifteen. He swung his arm back and forth, back and forth, his fingers just brushing the soft carpet.  Now he was of age, he was going to have to decide what to do with himself, besides buying this flat.  He could do more school, of course, but he needn't. He was intelligent, totally unburdened by any living relatives who might embarrass or disgrace him, and filthy rich.  He could become a councilor like his father in no time at all, and probably something even more impressive in not much more time than that. He doubted he had the ambition to be President, but he liked the idea that he could, if he wanted to. 

If it was to be politics, he should probably take the offer he’d had from Senator Liska to be his aide. Liska had seemed a little too eager to remind him just how _dear_ his father had been to him, which made him think Liska stood to gain more from Ili taking the position than Ili did, but of course that didn’t mean he shouldn’t do it. He did need to start somewhere.  Back and forth went his arm again.

A chime sounded, and he leapt to his feet.  "Who is it?" he asked, leaning an elbow on the intercom to open the connection.

"It's Thania. I have some papers from your mother for you. Oh, and happy birthday," she said, without much feeling.  Thania was the executor of his deceased parents' wills, his legal guardian, and his lawyer.  If Thania had been somebody else, they might have had a very close relationship, but they didn't at all.  He'd been orphaned at four--the perfect age to enroll a boy in a boarding school. Or so she'd decided. He hadn’t much liked school. He hadn’t had many friends, and having friends seemed to be what most people liked about school. He’d never found the right sort of things to do and say to make the other boys like him, and he thought a lot of the games the others liked were stupid, anyway—almost as stupid as the tasks his teachers set him.

He opened the door for her.

"Papers?" he asked. "Real papers?" 

"Yes," she said. "The information seems rather sensitive. It's locked in a bioprint safe, so only you can open it."

"That's enticing enough to make me rude," he said, in his best adult voice. "I'd invite you in, but I'd like to open it straight away."

Thania gave him an amused look and pressed the box into his hands.  "You'll call if you need anything."

*

Ili read the letter a third time.

_My Dear Ili,_

_I am so glad you have received this letter. I hoped you would someday read it, but I could not be certain. So much has probably changed since my death. I am sorry you have lived your life so long knowing so little about me.  You do not even know my real name, which was Anna Grant. I never wished to keep anything from you, but it was imperative that no one living know my true identity. I was very highly placed in Central Security, and secrets were my trade. The details of my work are very complicated and very unnecessary to you. All you need to know is that I married Chesku under a false name, and under false pretenses. I never loved him. In fact, I plan to kill him before the week is through, though not out of spite. His death is necessary to the revolution. If I have succeeded, I am sorry for the pain you must have felt, growing up without a father. If I have failed, I am sorry for the father you have had in Chesku._

_If you are reading this letter now, it is because I died as a rebel, working to bring down the corrupt government under which I lived at the time. I am certain you had no idea that I was ever a rebel. I was so highly placed in Central Security that it is a virtual certainty that, upon my death, my name was cleared of all suspicion, any indications of dissidence put down to an attempt to infiltrate a group of Federation enemies._

_Your real father is a man called Kerr Avon. The last I heard were rumours that he’d joined up with a rebel called Roj Blake. I cannot say what he will be doing now.  It is so difficult, writing to you from the past._

_What I must tell you is that I loved your father._ _I wanted to be with him always. I was assigned to bring him in for a political crime he was trying to commit, but instead I decided to run away with him. But he disappeared, and I was forced to go back to my husband. I could never find him again, no matter how hard I tried._

_Assuming you were orphaned, you have just inherited a fortune, which you probably won’t have any idea what to do with. Perhaps you are also very lonely. You ought to ask for advice, but from the right people. And make friends, but with the right people. If Kerr Avon is alive, and I do think he will be, he can help you with your money. He is very clever and, whatever you might have heard, he will not take advantage of you. He’s a good man. Pay him well for his efforts, and give him all my love._

_Happy Birthday, my love._

_Anna_  

Line after line of his mother's neat handwriting. He knew if he tried to write a letter, it would be a mess, but she was obviously used to writing with graphite. It was probably something you learned in Central Security.  

His eyes blurred with tears, making it impossible to read it yet again. It didn’t make sense. Why should he be crying? He hardly remembered his mother or his---the man he’d thought was his father. What did it matter if his real father was a terrorist, so long as nobody knew? Nothing needed to change. He was still just the same as he’d always been. There was no reason, really, that he should care about any of it. It ought to feel just like watching a vizsoap.

He dropped face-down onto the sofa and sobbed until he ached everywhere. 

*

“It’s me, Bek,” Bek shouted.

Avon shot a glance at Blake, in time to see him sigh with relief. Bek’s boots clanged down the long ladder, making a bass counterpoint to the cheering that had followed his shout.

“Well, Blake, your luck’s held again,” Avon said.  Blake received Avon’s comment, which was hardly praise, with a fond grin and a wry tilt of his head, which meant Blake’s spirits had improved very rapidly indeed. As had Avon’s own. They were once again more likely to die a quick death than a slow one; he and Blake would quarrel less now; and, although _of course_ physical discomfort and dread of death by starvation didn’t impair Avon’s own performance between the sheets, his sex life would doubtless improve.  _Blake_ would now be a much better lover.

The planet Calvos, their current hideaway, had become the harshest of deserts when Star One had fallen. With the planet’s original inhabitants and Federation colonists all evacuated or dead, and with no pressing need to populate new—or old—frontiers, the Federation had simply let the planet rot through Servalan’s presidency and the years that had followed. 

And now here they were, Avon thought, rotting away with it. It certainly hadn't been the best place to lick one’s wounds after being run out of one’s base of operations. It made their former base on Herom look comfortable—which might have been useful for morale, had they had any plans to return there. As it was, even the most delusional among them had struggled to find a bright side to look on.

Perhaps a hundred and fifty years ago, the underground hellhole they were now standing in had been a bunker, one of several built to keep civilians out of danger while Calvos fought to keep out of the Federation’s hands. Now, the air in the bunker was stale and close, and despite the blazing desert above them, it was freezing cold at night, which was hard on old injuries—and they all had plenty of those by now.

Blake had commanded one ship of Herom, and Soolin the other.  They’d kept in comm distance until Blake's ship had taken enough damage that they’d known they’d be lucky to make it to the nearest possible hideaway.  Orac, at least, had been good for locating Calvos and for sending a coded message to Soolin communicating their intended location, as well as their hope that Soolin might be able to reach a hospitable planet. But since landing—or rather, crash landing—they hadn’t been sure Soolin’s ship had made it out at all, or taken any less damage than they had, which meant that, as they began to run dangerously short of supplies, they’d had to consider the possibility that no one knew they were on Calvos at all.

Now that Bek had come to them, though, presumably at Soolin’s request, they could probably be out of this place within a month. It really was good news.

Bek stood blinking in the dim light, his eyes apparently shocked blind by the change from the white sand and sun aboveground. He turned towards Tarrant.

“Blake - it’s good to see you. I’ve brought enough food to get you through until you can make your repairs, and I can make a second run for whatever parts you need for your ship. And I also have a message for Avon. It might be best if I tell him in private, though.”

“I’m Avon, go on. Anything you can to say to me, you can say to all my friends here. I’m not the secretive type,” Vila said.

“That’s Vila,” Dayna said with a grin. “You should probably wait before you tell anybody anything until you can see well enough to tell one from the other, Bek. If you value your life.”

“Or if you value Vila’s,” Avon said mildly.

* 

Avon made Orac check and cross check the information. It would have been convenient, if there was some obvious sign of a fabrication, a lie, a trap, but there wasn’t. Which meant it wasn’t going to be easy to stay away. The lure of easy credits was as irresistible as ever—more than ever. It had been weeks since Avon had had a shower and years since he’d had new clothes.

And he had to admit, he felt some sense of responsibility to the boy who had sent the message, which was stupidity itself, of course. He also felt a snarl of emotion that he didn’t particularly want to sort out. Perhaps if he bothered to untangle it, he’d be able to talk himself out of going, which might be a very good idea.

*

“It’s probably a trap,” Avon said, in a futile effort against the inevitable. He’d told first Blake, then the others the news, and Blake now insisted not only that Avon go, but that the two of them go together. That meant that if it was a trap, Blake would die in it too, and that it would be Avon’s fault. He couldn’t bear either part of that equation. He ought to put a stop to all of this right now.

“It might be,” Blake agreed mildly. “But he does seem to be your son.”

“It’s too good to be true,” Avon said.

“I never knew you felt that way about children,” Vila said. “Blake, did you know Avon wanted children?”

“I do not _feel that way_ about children,” Avon snarled. “The boy claims he’s incredibly rich and wants _me_ to help him manage his money.”

“It’s a scam or he’s a fool,” Tarrant said.

Avon’s teeth clenched. His son was not a fool, but Tarrant certainly was, he thought. Then he thought better of the thought.  It was likely that what he wanted to say to Tarrant was at best half true; his son very probably was a fool. Who else would ask a known terrorist and embezzler for face-to-face financial advice?

“Oh, he probably just needed to find a reason to meet you. Who wouldn’t want to meet their father?” Dayna asked.

“If anybody didn’t want to meet his father, it would be Avon’s son. Especially if he’d met Avon. But then, he’d have met him, wouldn’t he, so it would be too late for that, I suppose,” Vila mused.

*

Ili scanned the patrons of The Brave New World through a zoom glass. All sorts—well dressed, shabbily dressed, young and old, were coming and going, talking over drinks, striking deals, flirting, and watching the viz screens, but the bar itself looked like it should have been for Alphas only. The staircases that wound their way up to each level were gleaming white and solid, and the floors of each level were clear, bullet-proof Perspex, so from the sixth and highest level, where he’d been told to wait, he could look down at everyone. On Earth, one couldn’t find a bar that would serve more than one grade, but he knew that thanks to Solar City’s gambling dens, the rich didn’t always get richer, so it made sense that a place like this wouldn’t limit itself.

He’d been waiting in another bar until a man he didn’t know came up to him and told him to come here instead. Ili’s father didn’t want to walk into a trap, the man said, so they were taking precautions. The man had taken him into The Brave New World, then left him to wait.

He’d tried for a little while to forget he’d ever read his mother’s letter, but it seemed a mistake to pass up some good advice, if he could get it. He wasn’t stupid enough to believe all of the propaganda about Blake and his rebels. It was all politics, really. He’d heard that Blake had tried twice to destroy Central Control, which would have killed millions. He’d heard Blake had been cloned twice. He’d even heard Blake had _died_ twice. If they were going to make these things up, three times had a better ring to it. Maybe he should be in charge of propaganda. Maybe some day he would be.  

Ili felt a tremor of excitement as it hit him again that he was about to meet Kerr Avon. What if Avon was just the kind of person Ili had always wanted to know? What if Avon cared about him? What if he was someone he’d be able to talk to—really talk to, someone who wouldn’t see him as a Chesku, someone who wouldn’t smile like they were laughing at him?

He was still trying to pick Avon out of the crowd when someone called his name from behind him. Ili turned on the high stool where he sat and looked his father in the face for the first time in his life. For a moment, Avon wore an expression of surprised recognition, but it quickly shifted into something Ili couldn’t read.

The shock of seeing Avon slowed his mind, so it took a moment for him to realize that the man beside Avon could only be Roj Blake. He'd only seen a very old picture of Blake, but it had to be. The Federation’s most wanted man, not ten feet away from him in a bar.

“Why, he’s your very image,” Blake exclaimed to Avon, grinning, as they came closer.  

Ili certainly hoped not. Both Blake and Avon looked rather run down.  A scar pulled down one of Blake’s eyes, and Avon limped. Avon also had a fleshy jaw, despite not being fat, and his hair—which had gone mostly gray—didn’t suit him at all. Ili was sure his own nose wasn’t that big, either.

“I wouldn’t worry. Blake’s vision is impaired,” Avon said acidly, so some of what Ili was thinking must have showed. He felt a sinking in his chest. It was all going wrong already.  

Blake rolled his eyes, giving the lie to Avon’s remark. Both eyes clearly worked perfectly well, despite the scar.

“I like your jacket – was it expensive?” Ili said, because he didn’t want it to be his fault, if they didn’t get on, and because it was true. Avon was dressed in a black-leather, studded thing that was a lot more like something the terrorists in the vizzies wore than anything he’d been expecting. It was torn at one shoulder and a few studs short of what it used to be, but he’d never seen anything like it on Earth.

Avon didn’t reply to the compliment, just raised his eyebrows.

“I’m Blake, and this _must_ be your father, Kerr Avon,” Blake said. He had a firm, warm grip.

“Well, I’ve definitely heard of you,” Ili heard himself saying, inanely.

“All good things, I hope,” Blake said.  He and Avon exchanged an amused glance that made Ili feel he’d been left out of the joke, even though he’d got it just fine. “You went to a lot of trouble to find us,” Blake added turning back to Ili.  

He had. Ili had been gone four months. Everyone back home on Earth thought he was off experiencing the best pleasures of the galaxy. Instead he’d spent a night outside the Domes thinking he’d get brought in as a rebel, then taken eight space shuttles, shaken hands with crimmos and gamblers and thieves, and spent a quarter of a million credits in bribes.

“It wasn’t so bad. Money makes everything easier, and I have a lot of that,” he said, trying his adult voice again. “I was hoping you could help me keep it that way.”

“Perhaps we can. Tell me the details,” Avon said, seating himself beside Ili and giving him a grin that made Ili wonder if his mother was right to think Avon wouldn’t take him for everything he had.

“There’s my father’s house on Cassiona, to start.  It isn’t worth what it was before the Andromedan war, but then, what is? I don’t plan to sell, but you can tell me what you reckon.  And then there’s the money in the bank, and the money on the market…”

Avon let him go on a while longer before he started asking questions, but once he started, he didn’t let up. Avon had obviously decided he was very stupid, even though Ili _did_ know something about all this--he’d made sure he did. Under all those sneering questions, he felt his cheeks getting flushed, almost as though they’d been slapped.

When Avon started in on giving him advice, it should have been better, but it wasn’t. Avon’s advice seemed like it was probably good, but he only caught about two thirds of it. Avon rattled it off brutally fast, and without pausing to let Ili ask questions of his own.  Ili knew he should have been taking notes on a datapad, but he also knew trying to write it all down would have made him look very silly, so he just listened and tried to keep up as best he could.  

“You Avons have admirable heads for numbers,” Blake said finally, “but mine is spinning a little. Can we talk about something other than money for a moment? Tell me, Ili, what do you love to do?”

He hoped Blake wasn't trying to help him out by changing the subject. That would be very embarrassing.

Ili shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

“Nothing?” Blake made an expression of exaggerated shock. “What gets you up in the morning?”

“Knowing I’m rich, I suppose.”

“Have you ever thought that you might like to help us?” Blake asked.

“Help us?” Avon sneered. “He’s a child with a few credits, Blake. What could he possibly do for us?”

Ili swallowed painfully. He was very glad he hadn’t admitted how hard it had been to find them. Then it might have seemed like he’d really wanted to see Avon, and he couldn’t imagine anything stupider, now, than wanting to see Avon.

“You know, I don’t need to bother with you, and I don’t think I will. I must say, you’re really a disappointment.”

Surprisingly, Avon grinned. It was an even scarier smile than the other one. It looked like he was about to say something, but Blake cut him off.

“Ili, your father and I are going to have a private word,” Blake said.

Blake didn’t ask him to wait, and Ili thought it would serve him right to just leave, but he stayed.

*

Avon walked with Blake until they were well away from the boy’s hearing, if not out of range of his zoom glass. 

“You hate him. Why?” Blake asked, coming straight to the point, as usual.

“It’s a standard bargaining technique,” Avon said. “I suggest he can’t do anything useful, he proves me wrong.”

“You do hate him, though.”

Actually, Avon didn’t. He just found it all excruciating—much worse than he’d thought it would be. He hadn’t thought much about it—deliberately hadn’t thought much about it—but he’d assumed it would be whatever he still despised in Anna that would make this difficult.

Instead it was what he now loathed in himself.

“And you can’t imagine why,” he said dryly, hoping Blake would come up with some reason of his own and spare Avon this conversation. There were a thousand reasons he might have hated Ili Chesku.

“Yes, but knowing you, you’ll surprise me.”

“He’s a greedy, selfish boy,” Avon said. “All he can think about is how wonderful it is to be untouchably rich.”

Blake laughed for a long time. “Well, you’ll just have to show him the error of his ways then, won’t you?” Blake managed to get out, still wracked with mirth.

Avon stared straight ahead at nothing and thought about what to say to that. After a minute, Blake touched his shoulder lightly.

“Is that what you see, when you look at me, Blake?” Avon asked.

“I _never_ did,” Blake said with quiet intensity.  “Never _._ Avon, you are so much--”

Avon cut him off. “Unpleasant as it is to be reminded of one’s worst qualities, it is even less pleasant to be reminded of one’s best.” It was pathetic, really, how much he’d needed to hear that. Needed to hear that from Blake. But there it was. He leaned heavily against the railing, trying to sort himself out. 

“So what about the boy?” Blake said, after a few polite minutes of silence.

“What about him?”

“You might try treating him like what he is.”

“Which is?"

“A lonely boy with a familiar face. Who wants very much to impress you.”

“It _is_ a striking physical resemblance.”

“Yes, but don’t worry. You’re the handsomer man,” Blake said, grinning at him. It was so much more than he deserved, to be loved by Blake. But Blake surely knew that, so Avon just said,

“Well, of course.”

*

When the two men made their way back towards him, they walked very close together, and it crossed Ili’s mind that they might well be lovers. In which case, some of the rumours were true. Ili might have wondered before what a man who had loved Sula Chesku would see in Roj Blake, but now he knew about his mother and he'd met his father - he wondered more what Blake saw in Avon.

But Ili could see even before Avon said anything that Avon was going to be different. Avon wasn’t smiling, exactly, but there was something more relaxed in the way he moved, something friendlier in the way he looked at Ili.

“We noticed you didn’t have time to buy a drink,” Avon said. Blake held a tray with three glasses of soma on it, and Avon picked one up and handed it to Ili, taking another for himself. 

“You might have put something in that. You might have decided to kidnap me,” Ili replied, a little sulkily.

“Good thinking. You’re absolutely right,” Avon said, with only light mockery, and switched the drink he’d given Ili for his own. When they were each holding the other’s drink, Avon gave him a closed-mouthed smile and knocked Ili’s glass a little clumsily against his own in an odd sort of toast. “I have an idea I think you’ll like.”

“So you want to be nice to me now.”

“I didn’t say that,” Avon said. He had a really, really good smile, when he smiled properly.

It was so good that Ili found himself saying, “All right. What’s your idea?” 

*

Ili had vaguely heard of Solar City’s “Second Sun.” It wasn’t really a sun, like the star it orbited, but rather a huge Ferris wheel that took you up almost into the sky. It hadn’t occurred to him to ride it, because he never did things like that. He wondered if Avon did either. It was hard to imagine.

They boarded a little capsule while still indoors. Blake got into one capsule, and then Ili and Avon got into the one behind it. Then they rose slowly, gears ratcheting them inexorably up.

They'd gone a quarter of the distance to the top of the wheel—perhaps a little more—when Avon hit a button that took down the Perspex around them. Ili found himself breathing hard, gripping the side of the capsule, his heart pounding uncontrollably. Obviously, the Perspex wasn’t doing anything important, but outside air on his skin wasn’t something he was used to, and it made the height feel a hundred times higher.

“Try counting breaths,” Avon said. Then he pointed ahead of them. “Look at that.  You see, Blake’s so terrified he’s fallen asleep.”

Ili counted breaths for a while, until he couldn’t tell if he was more terrified or excited. Then he tilted his head back against the wind and closed his eyes. He’d thought that might make him panic all over again, but it was exhilarating. He grinned.

“Thanks,” he said without looking at Avon. “It _was_ a good idea to come up here.”

When he opened his eyes, Avon was looking at him.

“You should never expect anything of anyone. That way you won’t be so easily disappointed.”

“Is that what you do?”

“No,” Avon said.

Avon obviously didn’t want to explain, and Ili didn’t have anything to say to that until they were half way to the top of the wheel. He felt he needed to give some kind of account or defense of himself, though, so he said, “my mother said in her letter you would be wonderful.”

“Did she?”

He found himself telling Avon everything she’d said. It was good to tell somebody, really. Well, it was good until Avon said something back.

“She lied,” Avon said. “She was never going to run away with me. She was running me, right until the end. She never wanted to see me again. When she wrote you that letter, she thought she never would. I killed her—I didn’t plan to, but when she realized I knew she’d betrayed me, she drew her gun, and--I fired. I suppose she told you all of those lies so that when you told them to me, I would be kind to you.” Avon’s voice was very, very flat.

Ili didn’t cry this time. He closed his eyes and breathed carefully and concentrated on the feeling of the wheel moving him slowly up towards the sky. 

“You really don’t think any of it was true?” he heard himself asking.

“Doesn’t it strike you as even a little suspicious that her letter contains everything a person of even moderate intelligence--and she was more than that--might think I would want to hear, from her undying love for me to her rebel sympathies?” Avon said. "Of course, I never was political, and she knew that. But she'd heard I was with Blake. What was she to think?" He smiled bitterly.

“Well, no I—don’t think that makes sense. Look, I hope you won’t get cross if I say that if my mother didn’t care a jot about you, and if she just wanted me to live a comfortable life without a subversive thought in my head, she would have done better never to mention your name, let alone send me after you. You’re a really desperate character, and I expect she knew that full well if she spent even a minute with you.”

Avon’s expression shifted around until Ili couldn’t tell if Avon found what he’d said funny, or upsetting.

Instead of answering Ili directly, Avon said, “aren’t you furiously angry with me for killing her?”

“I think I probably ought to be,” Ili said. “You killed somebody who loved me. But it seems—I don’t know. I don’t remember her at all, and you told me the truth when you could have lied.” Avon didn’t say anything to that, so Ili just kept talking. “I thought you must be doing all of this because you still loved her. If it all ended so badly, and you knew it, why help me?” His voice wasn’t completely steady, but almost.

“Well, the pay isn’t bad,” Avon said. The smile he gave Ili wasn’t as good as that first proper one, the one he’d used to get Ili to come on this ride, but it was better than any of the awful ones, and so Ili didn’t think he meant it as a putdown at all. And Avon had told him what Avon believed was the truth. Whether Avon was right or not, it had made him feel like what he thought about things mattered to Avon. Like maybe _he_ mattered to Avon.  He liked the thought, and he let himself think it even though Avon had told him not to expect anything. 

*

When Ili had said that he wasn’t going to come with them, it had been Avon’s turn to pull Blake aside and stop him saying something.

There were a number of things Avon could have said to Blake, and didn’t, about the way they lived and how absolutely insane it would be to choose a life like that. Or about how it would look for two desperate characters to steal away the flower of the Federation’s youth. Or that this boy expected him to be wonderful.

Instead he’d just said, “It’s his choice.”

“Well, he’s _your_ son,” Blake had said with bad grace.

“Yes,” Avon had snapped, and then they had both laughed.

The boy had asked if they could meet again in six months. In the mean time, he’d think over his life a little, think about what he wanted to do with it. 

“If we’re still alive,” Avon had said.

*

Ili half dozed, half thought on the shuttle home. Avon would be all right, he told himself. After all, Avon had been all right all this time, just like his mother had said he would. Ili would see him again.

It would be strange, to come back to Earth, to the flat he’d only lived in for a week.  Back when he’d bought the flat, before he’d got that letter from his mother, he’d never seen the real sky.

He wondered if he’d even like to look up through that window now.   

 

**Author's Note:**

> You can decide for yourself whether Ili or Avon is more right about Anna. Ili gets the last word, of course, in this story, but that doesn't mean anything.
> 
> Oh, and "you're a disappointment" is something a young man says to Parl Dro in _Kill the Dead_. Believe it or not, that young man is not his son. I don't know why I stole that particular thing from Tanith Lee, but I did.


End file.
